Intelligent Monitoring for Adaptation in Grid Applications

Grid applications access distributed, and often shared, resources. One consequence of this resource sharing is that measured application performance can vary widely and in unexpected ways. Determining the causes of poor performance, due to either anomalous application behavior or contention for shared resource use, and adapting to changing circumstances are critical to creation of robust Grid applications. Performance contracts and real-time adaptive control are two mechanisms to realize soft performance guarantees in Grid environments. Performance contracts formalize the relationship between application performance needs and resource capabilities. During execution, contract monitors use performance data to verify that expectations are met. When the contracted specifications are not satisfied, the system can choose to either adapt the application to available resources or reschedule the application on a new set of resources that can satisfy the original contract specifications. We describe an infrastructure for Grid application contract development and monitoring. This infrastructure, based on the Autopilot toolkit, provides flexible and scalable tools to assess both application and system behavior.     

Conceptual and Implementation Models for the Grid

The Grid is rapidly emerging as the dominant paradigm for wide area distributed application systems. As a result, there is a need for modeling and analyzing the characteristics and requirements of Grid systems and programming models. This work adopts the well-established body of models for distributed computing systems, which are based upon carefully stated assumptions or axioms, as a basis for defining and characterizing Grids and their programming models and systems. The requirements of programming Grid applications and the resulting requirements on the underlying virtual organizations and virtual machines are investigated. The assumptions underlying some of the programming models and systems currently used for Grid applications are identified and their validity in Grid environments is discussed. A more in-depth analysis of two programming systems, the Imperial College E-Science Networked Infrastructure (ICENI) and Accord, using the proposed definitions' structure is presented.     

The Grid Economy

This work identifies challenges in managing resources in a Grid computing environment and proposes computational economy as a metaphor for effective management of resources and application scheduling. It identifies distributed resource management challenges and requirements of economy-based Grid systems, and discusses various representative economy-based systems, both historical and emerging, for cooperative and competitive trading of resources such as CPU cycles, storage, and network bandwidth. It presents an extensive, service-oriented Grid architecture driven by Grid economy and an approach for its realization by leveraging various existing Grid technologies. It also presents commodity and auction models for resource allocation. The use of commodity economy model for resource management and application scheduling in both computational and data grids is also presented.     

The Semantic Grid: Past, Present, and Future

Grid computing offers significant enhancements to our capabilities for computation, information processing, and collaboration, and has exciting ambitions in many fields of endeavor. We argue that the full richness of the Grid vision, with its application in e-Science, e-Research, or e-Business, requires the "Semantic Grid." The Semantic Grid is an extension of the current Grid in which information and services are given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. To this end, we outline the requirements of the Semantic Grid, discuss the state of the art in achieving them, and identify the key research challenges in realizing this vision.     

Japanese Computational Grid Research Project: NAREGI

The National Research Grid Initiative (NAREGI) is one of the major Japanese national IT projects currently being conducted. NAREGI will cover the period 2003-2007, and collaboration among industry, academia, and the government will play a key role in its success. The Center for Grid Research and Development has been established as a center for R&D of high-performance, scalable grid middleware technologies, which are aimed at enabling major computing centers to host grids over high-speed networks to provide a future computational infrastructure for scientific and engineering research in the 21st century. As an example of utilizing such grid computing technologies, the Center for Application Research and Development is conducting research on leading-edge, grid-enabled nanoscience and nanotechnology simulation applications, which will lead to the discovery and development of new materials and next-generation nanodevices. These two centers are collaborating to establish daily research use of a multiteraflop grid testbed infrastructure, which will be built to demonstrate the advantages of grid technologies for future applications in all areas of science and engineering.     

Service-oriented operating systems: future workspaces

Most people use more than one computing system for their daily work: an office computer, a corporate laptop for travel, and a private desktop computer. These machines not only differ in their power and resources but also in their environment, including deployed applications, available files, and so on. The current trend is leading to an even greater number of devices and a wider range of capabilities. This presents a major challenge to enabling the vision of the mobile user and worker. This article shows how recent developments in the area of service-oriented computing, embedded devices, and networking will enable user-specific virtual working and private environments on the basis of new approaches toward distributed operating systems. These service-oriented operating systems will extend the limited capabilities of local devices with (remote) resource pools, aimed at provisioning identical (or similar) environments in any context and location. As we explain, henceforth, future employee workspaces will concentrate much more on mobility, while the actual resources (computational power, storage, data) will be maintained through dedicated corporate server farms, thus greatly reducing the administration effort and enhancing the user experience.     

A context-constrained authorisation (CoCoA) framework for pervasive grid computing

The paper discusses access control implications when bridging Pervasive and Grid computing, and analyses the limitations of current Grid authorisation solutions when applied to Pervasive Grid environments. The key authorisation requirements for Pervasive Grid computing are identified and a novel Grid authorisation framework, the context-constrained authorisation framework CoCoA, is proposed. The CoCoA framework takes into account not only users’ static attributes, but also their dynamic contextual attributes that are inherent in Pervasive computing. It adheres to open Grid standards, uses a modular layered approach to complement existing Grid authorisation systems, and inter-works with other Grid security building blocks. A prototype implementation of the CoCoA framework is presented and its performance evaluated.     

Embedding of Dedicated High-Performance ASICs into Reconfigurable Systems Providing Additional Multimedia Functionality

The computational power required in many multimedia applications is well beyond the capabilities of today's multimedia systems. Therefore, the embedding of additional high-performance accelerator multimedia components into these systems is most decisive. This paper presents the embedding of multimedia components into computer systems using reconfigurable coprocessor boards. The goal of those reconfigurable platforms which can be adapted to several applications and which include programmable digital signal processors, control and memory devices as well as dedicated multimedia ASICs is worked out. On the way to such a platform four ASICs for image and text processing are presented. The embedding of these components into a computing system using a CardBus-based coprocessor board is shown. Such a reconfigurable coprocessor board is an important intermediate stage on the way to future hybrid reconfigurable systems on chip.     

一种基于GMPLS的QoS区分服务框架的应用

基于GMPLS与光网络波长路由结合的控制方案被我们认为是认识未来"光子使能"网格计算传输结构的有效方法.为了解决人们对真实分布式计算的需求,文章在波长路由-光子网络层提出了一种能为网格应用提供QoS区分服务的通用框架,它建立在GMPLS对动态路由的选择和波长分配的基础上.实验表明,这种框架在技术上和经济上都是可行的.     

网格计算环境中的应用安全模型设计与实现

网格计算是近年来兴起的一个研究热点.它的出现和发展使得解决高性能计算领域的问题和挑战成为可能.而安全问题是网格计算成败的关键,因此,分析了当前网格计算环境的安全需求和网格安全基础设施(GSI)以及数字证书在GSI中的应用,并针对其存在的不足,设计了一种新型的网格应用安全模型,并基于网格计算环境实现了该模型.     

Virtual Computing Infrastructures for Nanoelectronics Simulation

The operational principles, components, and organization of a Grid-computing infrastructure called In-VIGO (standing for In Virtual Information Grid Organizations)are described. In-VIGO enables computational engineering and science in virtual information Grid organizations. Its distinctive feature is the extensive use of virtualization technologies to provide secure execution environments as needed by tools and users. This paper reviews and motivates the requirements of a cyber infrastructure for computational nanoelectronics. It then explains how such requirements are addressed by the In-VIGO middleware approach, which uses virtualized resources to build computational Grids. The architecture and key design aspects of its first deployed version-In-VIGO 1.0-are presented. It is operational and currently being used to enable the use of computational electronics tools over the Web. Aspects of the design and architecture of the next version of In-VIGO are also presented. It uses Web services standards and components, and lessons learned from In-VIGO 1.0.     

Accord: a programming framework for autonomic applications

The emergence of pervasive wide-area distributed computing environments, such as pervasive information systems and computational grids, has enabled new generations of applications that are based on seamless access, aggregation, and interaction. However, the inherent complexity, heterogeneity, and dynamism of these systems require a change in how the applications are developed and managed. In this paper, we present a programming framework that extends existing programming models/frameworks to support the development of autonomic self-managing applications. The framework enables the development of autonomic elements and the formulation of autonomic applications as the dynamic composition of autonomic elements. The operation of the proposed framework is illustrated using a forest fire management application.     

A Distributed and Elastic Application Processing Model for Mobile Cloud Computing

The latest developments in mobile computing technology have increased the computing capabilities of smart mobile devices (SMDs). However, SMDs are still constrained by low bandwidth, processing potential, storage capacity, and battery lifetime. To overcome these problems, the rich resources and powerful computational cloud is tapped for enabling intensive applications on SMDs. In Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC), application processing services of computational clouds are leveraged for alleviating resource limitations in SMDs. The particular deficiency of distributed architecture and runtime partitioning of the elastic mobile application are the challenging aspects of current offloading models. To address these issues of traditional models for computational offloading in MCC, this paper proposes a novel distributed and elastic applications processing (DEAP) model for intensive applications in MCC. We present an analytical model to evaluate the proposed DEAP model, and test a prototype application in the real MCC environment to demonstrate the usefulness of DEAP model. Computational offloading using the DEAP model minimizes resources utilization on SMD in the distributed processing of intensive mobile applications. Evaluation indicates a reduction of 74.6% in the overhead of runtime application partitioning and a 66.6% reduction in the CPU utilization for the execution of the application on SMD.

     

The next-generation ARC middleware

The Advanced Resource Connector (ARC) is a light-weight, non-intrusive, simple yet powerful Grid middleware capable of connecting highly heterogeneous computing and storage resources. ARC aims at providing general purpose, flexible, collaborative computing environments suitable for a range of uses, both in science and business. The server side offers the fundamental job execution management, information and data capabilities required for a Grid. Users are provided with an easy to install and use client which provides a basic toolbox for job- and data management. The KnowARC project developed the next-generation ARC middleware, implemented as Web Services with the aim of standard-compliant interoperability.     

Grid Computing: A Critical Discussion on Business Applicability

In the last decade, the Grid emerged from computing-intensive application domains. It has become very difficult to distinguish between "real" Grids, Web services, and simply a distributed computing environment. A critical discussion of Grid technologies points out the pros and cons of applying current Grid technologies in a business or enterprise environment.     

Edge robotics: are we ready? an experimental evaluation of current vision and future directions

Cloud-based robotics systems leverage a wide range of Information Technologies (IT) to offer tangible benefits like cost reduction, powerful computational capabilities, data offloading, etc. However, the centralized nature of cloud computing is not well-suited for a multitude of Operational Technologies (OT) nowadays used in robotics systems that require strict real-time guarantees and security. Edge computing and fog computing are complementary approaches that aim at mitigating some of these challenges by providing computing capabilities closer to the users. The goal of this work is hence threefold: i) to analyze the current edge computing and fog computing landscape in the context of robotics systems, ii) to experimentally evaluate an end-to-end robotics system based on solutions proposed in the literature, and iii) to experimentally identify current benefits and open challenges of edge computing and fog computing. Results show that, in the case of an exemplary delivery application comprising two mobile robots, the robot coordination and range can be improved by consuming real-time radio information available at the edge. However, our evaluation highlights that the existing software, wireless and virtualization technologies still require substantial evolution to fully support edge-based robotics systems.     

Sicherheit und rechtliche Herausforderungen in Bezug auf Cloud Computing und Kritische Infrastruktur-IT

The prevalence of machine-to-machine (M2M) will continue to increase because of the connection and interlinking of services in the domain of critical infrastructures (e.g. “smart grids”, traffic management or surveillance systems). This is leading to a constant rise of required computational and storage resources. As field systems typically offer only limited computing and storage capabilities and as many applications require a global view to integrated data from various devices, a natural location to store data and perform analysis tasks is in the Cloud, where an abundance of flexible resources can be used. However, this results in a number of security and privacy challenges in combination with some legal and technical considerations that need to be addressed. In this paper, we will investigate and categorize the above challenges associated with using the Cloud in a critical infrastructure and M2M context.     

异构分布环境下企业计算模型的研究与实现

异构分布环境下企业关键应用的无缝集成是企业计算要解决的重点问题.传统的企业计算模型采用自上而下的集成方法,往往与自下而上的实际集成过程相矛盾.本文提出的新的企业计算结构-以对等计算技术为核心的基于松耦合消息协同的企业计算模型UECM可以完全适应这种自下而上的集成需求.UECM目标在于为异构、分布、分散环境下的企业应用系统的互操作提供一个轻量的、低代价的、健壮的、可伸缩的基础平台,同时克服传统方法在扩展性和服务器瓶颈问题上的不足.     

Deploying the NaradaBrokering Substrate in Aiding Efficient Web and Grid Service Interactions

NaradaBrokering has been developed as the messaging infrastructure for collaboration, peer-to-peer, and Grid applications. The value of NaradaBrokering in the context of Grid and Web Services has been clear for some time. NaradaBrokering-combined with further extensions to, and testing of, its existing capabilities - can also take advantage of the maturing of Web Service standards and specifications to build very powerful general mechanisms to deploy and integrate it with general Web Services. This paper describes a framework to integrate the NaradaBrokering substrate with Web Services.     

一种网格环境的服务查找算法

网格计算为大规模Internet应用提供了必要的基础架构,服务查找是网格计算的重要研究内容之一。但是目前常见的服务查找算法不太适应于网格环境的分散性和松耦合等特点。提出了一种分布式的、综合考虑网络延迟和节点负载情况及处理能力、适合于网格环境的服务查找算法DDCA。实验结果表明,DDCA算法能有效提高网格环境下应用的整体性能。